THE SYRIAN PROBLEM : Time to Negotiate has passed

The Damascus Spring of 2001 was so called because Syrian democrats hoped that President Bashar al-Assad, a mild-mannered doctor trained in London, who had been installed as the successor to his ruthless father, Hafez, might forswear tyranny. That Spring ended, and some of the hopeful landed in torture rooms. Four years later, activists issued the Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change, which called on Assad to hold free parliamentary elections, “launch public freedoms,” and “abolish all forms of exclusion in public life.” Instead, he imprisoned the document’s leading signatories.

Last Thursday morning, Radwan Ziadeh, a signer of the Damascus Declaration, went to the State Department, in Washington, D.C., to hear President Obama assess the current Arab Spring, which has brought forth popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt as well as mass protests elsewhere, including in Syria, where Assad has responded by shooting demonstrators. Obama arrived late, after doing last-minute rewrites at the White House. On Syria, the President offered just eight parsed sentences. He accused Assad’s regime of murder but did not call forthrightly for the President’s departure, as he had when Libya’s dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, ordered that protesters be shot. Syria’s ruler “has a choice,” Obama said. He can lead “a transition to democracy . . . or get out of the way.” But Ziadeh was pleased, he said, because Assad now “has to understand that he has to step down.”

A Syrian spring that rewarded its hopeful citizens would signal a major change. The country, though not as influential as Egypt, has modernized in certain respects; it has a sophisticated middle class. Moreover, because of its geographic centrality, Syria has been a fulcrum of regional politics, and it is pivotal to the futures of Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinians. In the meantime, the regime is making it difficult to provide a full accounting of the cruelties its security forces have inflicted: almost all foreign journalists have been barred from the country. Human Rights Watch estimates that about eight hundred people have died and many thousands have been arrested.

The uprising started, in March, in Dar’a, a southern city of smoky streets and eucalyptus trees. Schoolboys scrawled anti-government graffiti on walls, and were jailed. Protests erupted and the police opened fire, igniting an escalating cycle of demonstrations and violence. In late April, Assad’s forces laid siege to Dar’a, shutting off the electricity, water, and telephones. They arrested scores of young men simply because of their age and where they lived. The tactics seemed derived from those of Hafez al-Assad: his forces killed some twenty thousand people while putting down an uprising in Hama, in 1982.

Brutality sometimes works. The numbers of people willing to die or to face imprisonment by taking to Syria’s streets have so far proved less overpowering than those in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen. Syria is a mosaic of religions, sects, and ethnicities, and the Assad family, from the Alawite minority, is well practiced in the art of divide-and-conquer. Large sections of the urban middle classes and the Christian minority have so far stayed at home. Nonetheless, the revolt is far from expiring. On “The Syrian Revolution 2011,” a Facebook page that has played a part in the unrest, users issue polemics and post fresh video clips about every ten minutes. Pop political art and photographs of bloodied young men scroll by—part media installation, part war-crimes documentary. The day after Obama’s speech, thousands of Syrians took to the streets; the police reportedly shot and killed at least twenty people.

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ACTION REQUESTED:

Contact your representatives:
Just as President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders called for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Libyan President Col. Muammar Qaddafi, so too must they call for the immediate resignation of Syrian President Bashar Assad. His deadly attacks on peaceful demonstrators must be condemned by the U.S., if we truly support democracy and the will of the people.
The Syrian government must immediately stop the killing of civilians, protect peaceful demonstrators, provide open access to medical care, allow free access to humanitarian organizations and international media and expedite serious political and democratic reforms that satisfy the aspirations of the Syrian people.Click here to find your Representative
To find your Congressman: house.gov
To find your Senator: senate.gov
Call the White House: 202-456-1414
Call the U.S. State Department: 202-647-4000 and 202-647-6575
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of Foreign Relation Committee: 202-224-2742
U.N. Secretary Gen. Ban Ki-moon: 212-963-5012 or ecu@un.org
Syrian Embassy: 202-232-6316 or info@syrembassy.net

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If you have information about human rights violations in Syria, contact the International Criminal Court: 011-31(0)70-515-8515, 011-31-(0)70-515-8555 (f), or otp.informationdesk@icc-cp.int

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